The-Mickelsons.net

We’ve been remiss in posting pictures of the twins and their big sister to the blog lately, but hopefully this slideshow will make up for that a little bit. We hope you enjoy seeing how much the boys have grown in just three short months.

By the way, Neil put this video together as a surprise for Geitra as part of the twins’ baptism celebration last Sunday. We’ll get some pictures of that posted soon.

Well, the twins are about two-and-a-half weeks old now, and we might be starting to settle into a rhythm. The first week was pretty challenging, because Gabriel started having some problems keeping his food down after a feeding due to reflux. With some help from the doctor and Mylicon, we found the magic combination and he started eating better. Both of the boys were actually not quite gaining the weight that we wanted to see, so the doctor started us feeding them higher-calorie formula and said to keep the house at around 75°F. So we’re now officially living in a hot-house.

It paid off, though—just a week later, both boys are above their birth weights (Gabriel finally broke the five-pound mark at five pounds, two ounces; Adrian weighed in at five pounds, 14 ounces) and were putting on weight at a rate of three ounces per day (versus the normal one ounce per day). We’re getting a little rhythm going at night, with Neil taking the pre-1AM feedings so Geitra can continue to rest and recuperate from her surgery. Sleep remains a bit uneven for us, but that’s to be expected.

So, that’s about it for now…but Neil wanted to share this photo with everyone. It’s one of his favorites so far.

We’re proud to announce the birth of our twin boys, Gabriel Edward and Adrian Robert Mickelson. They were born shortly after midnight on Thursday, January 22, 2009 at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. While they were born about four weeks premature, both of them are heathly and have been “rooming in” with Geitra at the hospital. They were delivered by Ceasarian section due to Gabriel’s low expected birth weight, but Geitra is recovering very well from the surgery. We brought the boys home around 12:30AM on January 26th—stay tuned for another blog post for the story behind that.

Gabriel was born at 12:42AM, weighing four pounds, 15 ounces and meauring 18 and 1/4 inches long. Adrian was born at 12:43AM, weighing five pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 19 inches long.

As you’ll see in the pictures below, Amelia had a chance to introduce herself to her new baby brothers the day after they were born—you should have heard her howl when we took one of the boys out of her arms!

Our thanks to all the family and friends that have helped us get ready for the blessing of the boys’ arrival, and for everyone’s heartfelt prayers for a healthy birth. It helped us more than you can know.

Andy Warhol is famous for saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Well, Neil used up about 6 seconds of his allotment as we came home from our vacation.

When we arrived at LaGuardia Airport in New York to check in for our flight home, we were dragging about six bags with us — two of which were huge rolling bags, plus two smaller rolling bags, a large duffel bag, and a backpack. As we went into the airport, we were picked out by a video photographer and news reporter from one of the local NBC affiliates, who informed us that United and other airlines would soon be charging to even check ONE bag when flying. Long story short, Neil ended up being interviewed for a little while about the new charges, and the cameraman shot some B-roll of us getting checked in, swapping things between bags to meet weight limits, etc.

The interview was supposedly going to run nationwide that night, but if it did, we missed it — we doubt it ran, because we came back home the same day Tim Russert passed away, which took up most of the rest of the NBC newscasts that day. After that, we thought nothing of it.

But as it turns out, the video got cut into a bigger piece that ran on the Today show later the following week. Aside from identifying Neil as “Mike,” it was kind of a neat thing to see (online, of course — we don’t have the time to watch the broadcast on TV!). Thanks much to Amy for letting us know about this.

You can watch the video by clicking the “read more” link below. Neil’s six seconds of airtime happen after about a minute.

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Then go to the World Championship PunkinChunkin contest in Delaware!!

The complete works of Mozart are available online as scores from the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum. The initial response completely swamped their servers, but they are back up and running.